Close to Home: Incarceration leaves kids worse off

Kudos to the Board of Supervisors and the staffs at our juvenile justice institutions for taking a new look at the way delinquent kids are handled in Sonoma County (“County reviews juvenile programs,” May 10).

In my experience both as a past member of the Juvenile Justice Commission and as a volunteer spiritual adviser for incarcerated kids, I found Juvenile Hall to be a clean and well-run facility, offering lots of programs and with few instances of physical or sexual abuse.

But you know what? If one of my own kids ever had a run-in with the law, I wouldn't want him to be sent there or to any other juvenile detention facility. Juvenile prisons, even the best of them, are institutions. And institutionalizing teenagers is bad news.

Institutionalizing delinquent youth doesn't rehabilitate them; it stunts their growth as human beings. All of their decisions are made for them.

How does a kid grow up in a place that is nothing at all like the world he will face? How do you form relationships where the “no touch” rule is in effect 24/7.

How does a young man learn something about relating to the opposite sex in an all-male environment? How do you learn to make good choices when all your choices are made by the institution?

Listen to a 17-year-old kid reflecting on his state of mind after spending nearly a year in juvenile hall: “I wasn't sexually abused or beat up or things like that, but it was just so weird being locked up in such close quarters.

“We were told what to do and when to do it. We all wore the same clothes. We all went to bed at the same time, ate the same food, showered when we were told to. Our lives were programmed by staff. They made the decisions; our job was to do as we were told, to follow the schedule.

“To tell you the truth, the boredom was killing me. I wanted to get out, but I was really nervous about what would happen to me after I left.”

He had reason to be scared. Kids aren't just being punished in juvenile prisons. They are emotionally hobbled by the experience. The teens are a critical stage in the development of a human being. Kids grow up through normal interaction with their peers, by learning to make decisions for themselves and, yes, by benefiting from their mistake. If their growth is stunted by being institutionalized, they have no room to develop as human beings.

It's hardly surprising that the majority of kids who “graduate” from juvenile detention centers are back again or, as they age out of juvenile facilities, they move on to adult prisons.

The whole idea of having a juvenile justice system came about because we realized that a kid of 14 or 15 or 16 is different than an adult. They are in process. They are learning. They are more amenable to change than a person of 25 or 30. That's why the emphasis needs to be put on rehabilitation in a community, not incarceration that leaves kids worse off than when they entered the system.

Hank Mattimore volunteered as a spiritual adviser at Sonoma County Juvenile Hall. He is a past chairman of the Sonoma County Juvenile Justice Commission. He lives in Windsor.

You can send a letter to the editor at letters@pressdemocrat.com